In The Pursuit of Wisdom

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Post #3

Blurbs 12-17… July 8, 2014

(12)ADDICTED TO ELECTRONIC DEVICES

Technology overload is a fact of modern life. E-mail, tablets, I-phones, laptops, cell-phones dominate our world. They enable us to instantly connect with everybody, everywhere. Psychologists tell us the curse of modern life is that we can do so much. We have to multi-task to keep up. How can we slow down and take back our lives? A provocative essay in Next Draft .com entitled, The AnswerIs Just A Click Away concludes that what we have to do is just turn off our devices and start talking face to face. Easier said than done. The tidal wave of technological advances is so powerful, pervasive and compelling, it is likely “we will become more connected, more wired, and more distracted. There is no turning back”. Apparently cartoonist Liam Francis Walsh agrees. Here’s his take in the June 7, 2014 New Yorker magazine:

(13)TED TALKS—–BASICS

TED Talks ( TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design) are immensely popular. If you don’t know about them, you should. There are over 1800 speeches, they’re short (under 18 minutes) and they cover almost every subject. The smartest people on the planet offer innovative ideas with passion, eloquence and humor. Speakers have included Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Bono, Al Gore, David Brooks and Sting. The talks have been watched over one billion times worldwide in over 100 languages. Listen, take notes and learn. You can watch TED Talks on ted.comor youtube.comor listen on NPR radio. Shortest talk: Arianna Huffington (“How To Succeed? Get More Sleep“–4 minutes). Most Widely Viewed: Ken Robinson (“How Schools Kill Creativity”-26 million views). One of my favorites: Rick Elias ( “3 Things I Learned While My Plane Crashed“; Elias had a front row seat on the plane that crash-landed in the Hudson River; it’s 5 minutes).

(14)RED DRESS REGRETS

Do you know a self-sacrificing woman like the one described below, a mother who spends her life attending to the needs of others while neglecting her own? If you do, you might want to show her the following poem:

(16)BE YOURSELF

A local broadcaster ends her daily talk show with the advice, “Be yourself, everybody else is taken.” That same thought is expanded on by Pulitzer prize-winning novelist, Anna Quindlen, in her 1999 commencement speech to the women of Mt Holyoke College. “Trying to be perfect is hard work……Give up the nonsensical and punishing quest for perfection that dogs too many of us through much of our lives. Set aside what your friends expect, what your parents demand and what our culture dictates, through its advertising. Say no to the Greek chorus that thinks it knows the parameters of a happy life when all it knows is the homogenization of human experience. Listen to that small voice from inside you that tells you to go another way. And remember what English novelist George Eliot wrote, “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” Perhaps entertainer Ellen DeGeneres sums up the topic best when she says, “Accept who you are. Unless you’re a serial killer.”

English businessman Felix Dennis quit school at 15 and subsequently built a magazine publishing empire worth some $800 million. He recently died at 67. According to the NY Times obituary, he lived an amazing life. He had 5 homes and boasted of 14 mistresses which he claimed cost him over $1oo million to support. He wrote a book, How To Get Rich, in which he says that “having a great idea is overrated” and that what really matters is “great execution”. In his later years, Dennis wrote poems-1500 of them. He would read selections at public gatherings which were well attended, probably because they were publicized under the heading, “Did I Mention the Free Wine?”. Dennis said his only regret was not having a child. He said his legacy would be the one million broad-leaved trees planted on his Stratford-upon-Avon estate, which is over seven times the size of Hyde Park in London. In one of his poems, Dennis writes: Whoever plants a tree, Winks at immortality.

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Post #3 — 2 Comments

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